This Day in Failure: June 3

2003: Chicago Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa is ejected in the first inning of a game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays for using a corked bat. Sosa receives an eight-game suspension for his indiscretion.

1984: The 120-foot bark Marques, en route from Bermuda to Halifax, Nova Scotia, rolls over and sinks in less than a minute, and 19 of 29 crew members perish. An independent investigation concludes that the Marques had too much sail area for the ballast it had been carrying and that a slight increase in wind speed under full sail had capsized the ship.

1979: The exploratory oil well Ixtoc I blows out in the Bay of Campeche off the coast of Ciudad del Carmen, Mexico. The well isn’t brought under control until the following year, by which point an estimated 140 million gallons of oil spills into the bay, making it the largest accidental spill of all-time.

1973: A Russian Tupolev supersonic jet (one of 17 made by the Soviets), crashes while taking part in the Paris air show at LeBourget airport, killing six crewmen and eight people on the ground. The pilot, Mikhail Kozlov, loses control during a steep climb, and the plane comes down in Goussainville, just four miles from the impact site of the Concorde in July 2000.

1950: Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal reach the summit of Annapurna, becoming the first men—after countless attempts over several decades—to climb an 8,000-meter peak. The conquest comes at a price, however, as Lachenal loses all his toes to frostbite and Herzog loses all his toes and fingers. Herzog’s book about the expedition, “Annapurna,” sells more than 11 million copies, turning the French mountaineer into the first mountain climbing celebrity.